Great Expectations

Refinery 29 recently caught up with the amazing Tilda Swinton and asked her to compile a list of her favorite books this summer. We couldn’t help but jump for joy after seeing her final list of 12 fun, enlightening and classic page-turners. Be sure to pick up as many of these as possible. For the full article, click here. 1. Auntie Mame, Patrick Denise 2. A Time of Gifts, Patrick Leigh Fermor 3. Love in a Cold Climate, Nancy Mitford 4. Light Years, James Salter 5. Great Expectations, Charles Dickens 6. Owning Your Own Shadow, Robert A. Johnson 7. The Child, the Family, and the Outside World, D.W. Winnicott 8. The Essential, P.G. Wodehouse 9. The Collected Poems of Frank…

A red rose means love. A daisy, innocence. A violet signifies faithfulness. Vanessa Diffenbaugh’s bestselling novel The Language of Flowers (Ballantine, 2011) sparked renewed interest in Victorian “floriography,” or flower symbolism. Recipients used floral dictionaries to decode the meanings of complicated “talking bouquets” and made floral arrangements to communicate feelings society would not permit them to say aloud. To celebrate spring, BookTrib offers a bouquet of seasonal blooms and their fictional counterparts. These female characters (and one real-life heroine) are no shrinking violets. Daffodil: Scarlett O’Hara (Gone with the Wind) The daffodil, also called the narcissus, has several meanings in floriography. Sharing a name with a Greek character who falls in love with his own reflection, it’s no surprise that…

Last week we designed looks for classic-novel heroines, and now it’s time to dress the men. Find out what Holden Caulfield might wear as he wanders a 21st century New York, or what social-climbing Pip would put on before visiting Mrs. Havisham in her dilapidated mansion. These four men are definitely well-dressed, and—for some reason—considerably hotter when you picture them in modern clothes. First, the covers to get you in the mood. And on to our dapper heroes! Great Expectations: Pip A modern day Pip would be a little bit trendy and a little bit classic. His roots wouldn’t necessarily reflect who he has become, but his look would always have a touch of this-guy-is-trying-too-hard. Still, he’d definitely gain…

The time is ripe for backstories and sequels. We can’t get enough of extending a beloved story as far as possible. No, not the latest Hobbit movie, or the long-heralded return of the Star Wars saga in 2015; I’m talking about the perennial draw of literary updates. There are many fraught questions to consider when modernizing a classic: how true will this be to the original when it comes to chronology, voice, incident, and character? Will it be history, future story (sequel), or deeper, contemporaneous story? How much is invented, and are any additions warranted? Is the new interpretation relevant, contemporary, and believable? In sum, is this new version necessary? In my view, it must either add something to the…